LAMP announces international lighting design competition finalists

L A M P (Lighting Architecture Movement Project) is preparing for its fourth annual international lighting design competition and exhibition, set to run this November 3rd to 6th in Vancouver, British Columbia. L A M P aims to introduce a broader audience to lighting design while promoting and connecting emerging talent to new markets.

The finalists of the competition have been announced — including four finalists from Canada. Judged by some of the world’s top industry design leaders, submissions from around the globe were voted under three categories, including student, emerging and established designers. Each year the competition challenges designers to approach their lamps with the guidance of a theme. This year’s judges made their decisions based on a set evaluation ranging from aesthetics, marketability, innovation, and unique interpretation of this year’s theme, Cosmic.

Diaphanous by Matthew Kennedy from Chilliwack, B.C., Canada
Established Category

Diaphanous by Matthew Kennedy. Photo courtesy of L A M P.

Diaphanous lights the night hours with starlight.

The ancients believed a firmament separated the heavens from the earth, a hemisphere from where the stars shone down to lighten our darkest hours. Diaphanous recreates this cosmic order, a luminaire fashioned with an LED waveguide dome, floating above, with light extractors fashioned by custom laser etching to represent the multitude of stars and nebulae of the cosmos.

Diaphanous is a map to the stars, recreating the actual patterns of the night sky from any point of view on earth, shown here as the night sky of the Northern hemisphere. The minimal parts and innovative, screw-free assembly makes Diaphanous sustainable and cost effective, comprised of a waveguide, a circular LED array, a central ring-shaped heatsink and conductive support cables, capable of creating intense or dimmed light at a staggeringly energy-efficient 130 lumens per Watt with superior CRI 92 colour rendering.

The design of this lamp was achieved through the exploration of a variety of themes related to the cosmos which were used as analogical tools. Foremost of these, were the concentric motions of the cosmic spheres (the moon revolves around earth, which revolves around sun, which revolves around the galactic centre), as well as the poetic aspect of the constellations that shows how humans create a connection with the infinite by applying their own scale onto the stars.

Indeed the purpose of this project was to create an object that can recreate the narrative of our obsession to understand the universe and find our origins in the stars. It does so through this introspective and contemplative experience of playfully pivoting the concentric spheres to find the light at its centre. The shape of the lamp was inspired by the observatory’s wandering eye and the gyroscope’s multiple pivoting axes.

“Pierre de lune” celebrates the singularity of bedtime rituals by creating a soft, warm and unique light. The digital tools used to produce each one of its parts make “Pierre de lune” a unique home object who’s detailing remains minimal and elegant.

The concrete sphere expresses the simplicity but also the imperfect shape and surface of our moon. Its weight, however, is somehow related to gravity, taking you right back on Earth. The maple wood lens was chosen in order to create a natural and soothing light. The angle of the projected light also mimics the effect of the sun disappearing on the horizon. As would be a piece of our moon, each lamp is made unique by the spontaneity of the molded concrete’s pore patterns as well as the naturally occurring veins on the wooden lens, which are impossible to reproduce or standardise.

Cloud is a series of hand blown glass objects. Blowing molten glass into the inside of a hand knotted wire cage forms the unique, organic volumes. The copper cage is then removed leaving behind a faint copper shadow in the indents of the glass.

While the form of Cloud is like that of a cumulonimbus cloud or a cluster of bubbles the light cast by Cloud is reminiscent of the cosmic phenomena of a starburst galaxy. Cloud is illuminated with an LED.

Alex Fitzpatrick was also announced as a finalist in the Emerging category for the project Greenway. Though located in Sydney, Australia, Fitzpatrick is originally from Calgary, Alberta.

To view the full list of finalists, please click here.
To learn more about the competition and exhibition, please click here.